Jim Kelly will have chemotherapy and radiation, not surgery

Hall of Fame quarterback Jim Kelly’s doctors have told him surgery is not the best option for his oral cancer.

Kelly, whose family had previously announced that his surgery was scheduled for Thursday, will instead have chemotherapy and radiation therapy. His wife, Jill Kelly, provided an update on Facebook.

“There’s been a lot that has been said so we thought it would be best to clarify,” Jill Kelly wrote. “At this point and time surgery is not the best option for Jim. Because of complexity and aggressive nature of this cancer and after more scans and tests, the plan has changed. At this point, Jim will not be having surgery. The cancer is in areas that surgery cannot successfully eradicate. Therefore, the medical specialists here in NYC along with our Buffalo team believe that chemotherapy and radiation are the best option.”

The 54-year-old Kelly revealed in June that he was fighting cancer, and he had a previous surgery to remove part of his jaw.

Chemo and radiation is an absolutely brutal tag team. It destroys ALL cells (healthy and malignant) — indiscriminately. The whole concept behind both treatments is that once you kill the cancerous cell tissue – that you have enough healthy cells to emerge alive on the back end.

This is pretty ominous — hope K-Gun comes out on top of this battle. If anyone has the guts, courage, resilience and toughness, Kelly would have to be right up at the top of the list. He did lead Buffalo to one Super Bowl after the other — despite a lot of discouraging defeats — four (consecutive) times something that has never been done before by any player ever before or since. So we know he’s a fighter, big-time.